10-03-2019, 10:33 AM
(10-03-2019, 08:43 AM)oncemoreuntothejimbreech Wrote: How are straw purchasers identified?
For someone engaging in it as a source of criminal revenue it's rather easy. Does X person buy a large amount of guns? Does X person still have possession of a majority of them? Do guns purchased by X person seem to often end up in the hands of criminals? Now if you have a person who has done this once or twice proving straw purchasing becomes more difficult, but not impossible. However, finding a large number of people willing to risk prison time to furnish criminals with guns is not an easy task, hence the numbers of people engaged in this activity are small and account for a large percentage of straw purchases.
The main issue is that the building a case takes a large commitment of time and investigative effort. Add that to straw purchasing not being a "sexy" arrest, indictment or conviction coupled with the always present potential of the jury buying the defense's bullshit and it's not made a priority.
(10-03-2019, 09:30 AM)Belsnickel Wrote: So I think here is where the hangup occurs. It is illegal to sell, or even give, a firearm to someone that is not legally allowed to own one. I believe this is the law in every state. However, in many states if a transaction is between two individuals, there is no requirement for a background check to be conducted. So the question then becomes how can we enforce the law about providing a firearm to someone illegally if there is no sure way for them to know that the transfer was illegal? Should we not hold people accountable if they transfer a firearm to someone that is not legally allowed to own one?
Yes, this is a problem, but a proportionately minute one. The straw purchases I explain above aside, it's exceedingly rare for a criminal to purchase a firearm from a law abiding individual via private party transfer (CA lingo there). Rare enough to be statistically insignificant.
Quote:This is where the idea of universal background checks does fill a gap in the law. Criminals will acquire their firearms illegally, we know that. They acquire them from people that are not dealers and therefore often don't need to conduct any sort of background check under the law. To hold those people accountable, instituting a universal background check law would mean that there is a mechanism of accountability in place.
Sure, it would block the insignificant number of guns going to criminals in that fashion. However, seeing as how the vast majority of firearms end up in criminal hand via theft, both home and commercial burglary, followed distantly by straw purchases, it would have almost zero effect on gun related homicides. In fact, I'd venture to say it would have zero impact as criminals would then turn exclusively to the methods just mentioned.
Also, said universal background checks would require a national database of owned firearms to be enacted. Such a database could then be used in the future by Dems like Robert Francis, Biden and Warren who are openly campaigning, to varying degrees, on the confiscation of legally purchased private property. Those public, and finally honest, statements from leading candidates for POTUS (and Robert Francis) have utterly squashed any chance of universal background checks being agreed upon. It's almost like they don't really care about gun violence.
Quote:It isn't a perfect solution. It isn't going to fix everything. However, it is something that can be used to help enforce existing laws.
It could, but as I stated above not to any appreciable degree.
